What's Not in the Report
by cleasugar
Summary: Ellison has a talk with his captain about Sandburg's role in the police department. Episode tag for The Rig. One shot. Rated for mild swearing.


What's not in the report

The knock on his door was sharp and decisive, identifying the man behind it as clearly as if he'd called out his name. Captain Simon Banks of the Cascade PD had been steering this particular ship for a long time, and he could pick out any of his men by the way they walked, the way they slammed things down on their desks, the way they knocked on his door.

"Come on in, Jim," he called.

Jim Ellison, the big bad wolf of the Major Crimes Section, slunk in, almost hesitantly. It made Simon curious, and his eyes narrowed as Jim shut the door behind himself, then proceeded to prowl around the office, a file folder gripped in one hand.

"If that's the Cyclops Oil report, you could have just emailed it to me." Simon could tell his best detective was unsettled by the way he came to stand, almost at attention, in front of Simon's desk. It was a holdover from his army days Ellison fell into almost subconsciously - the stance he adopted when he had to deliver news he didn't like or thought might be taken badly. Simon had noticed it almost immediately when he'd taken over the department. And Sandburg had picked up on it the first official day of his ride along. "Where's the kid?" Simon asked, since Jim's enthusiastic shadow was noticeably absent. You could tell by the quiet.

Jim shuffled a bit, and then finally seemed to come back into himself, and eased down into the chair across from Simon. "Sandburg had to teach a class this morning," he said, "but he's already emailed you both our reports. They should be in your inbox."

Simon nodded, secretly pleased. The quality of Jim's reporting had improved exponentially since Sandburg had been working alongside him. For all the kid could talk, he knew how to be concise in print, and he was an expert at getting to the point and sticking to what really mattered. It was probably all that university training, Simon thought. Those academic types were sticklers about the difference between fact and speculation and from what Banks could tell, the kid's own standards were twice as high.

Jim still hadn't said anything, he had a look of a man who had a story to tell, but didn't know where to begin. But Simon Banks didn't get to be Captain of the police department with the highest solve rate in Washington State just on his good looks. He knew how to motivate his men. Sometimes it meant yelling at them, and sometimes it meant offering them a cup of coffee. He poured a cup from the pot that stayed full in his office and pushed it towards Ellison. "What's on your mind, Jim?" he asked.

Ellison took the cup but didn't drink-Sandburg had explained to Simon once that the man had trouble with foods that were very hot or very cold. "It's actually about Sandburg," Jim said, "I wanted to wait until he wasn't here before I talked to you about what's _not_ in our reports."

Simon Banks sobered. That sounded serious. "Not in your reports? Is there a problem with Sandburg I need to know about?" He didn't think Ellison would go so far as to cover up something that could be dangerous, but with the Sentinel thing and Sandburg's constant but ill-defined role in Jim's life, Simon thought that it was likely some lines were becoming blurred.

"No," Jim was saying, "Well, yes, but it's not what you're thinking. Nothing is being covered up." Simon was reminded again at how quick on the uptake the man was, "It's more that something isn't being reported."

Simon thought that sounded like the same thing. But he'd learned not to leap to conclusions, especially with this detective. Jim leaned forward, looking earnestly at his Captain. "Look, sir, I know most people here think Blair's a bit of a flake, here on borrowed time until he finally screws up so badly we kick his hyperactive butt to the kerb." Simon smiled slightly. "He is a bit flaky, Jim, but I think he's held his own pretty well in some very sticky situations."

"I agree," Ellison looked relieved at Simon's assessment. "But the reports we turn in minimize Sandburg's presence and his impact. You know they do." Simon did know. At the beginning of this unlikely experiment, he'd been grateful for Sandburg's sense of discretion. The last thing he'd needed was trying to explain how a civilian observer…an anthropologist…ended up walking into the middle of a gang war to defend a blind old lady or tied to a chair by an obsessed serial killer. "Blair has handled himself well," he offered to the detective, "he's got a lot of natural talent. Keeps his head in a crisis."

"Took out a couple of paramilitary terrorists with a vending machine and a flare gun on his first day," Jim grinned. Simon laughed. "The damnedest thing," he said.

Jim eased back in his chair, looking pleased that they both seemed to be on the same page. "The thing is, sir," he went on, "Blair's always been insistent that his name be left out of the reports as much as possible…it has something to do with maintaining standards of academic professionalism between a researcher and his subject of study." Jim sounded like he was repeating an often-heard phrase. Simon nodded, waiting for his detective to get to the point he wanted to make. Ellison took a deep breath. "I'm not comfortable with the fact that Sandburg's involvement is not being properly documented," he finally said.

Simon gave his man a long look as he poured himself another cup of coffee. "What the hell happened on that rig, Ellison?" he asked.

Jim smiled slightly. "Well, sir," he said, "there was the time when he saved me from drowning after the rig boss dumped me in a vat of you don't want to know what." Simon's eyebrows climbed. "He actually reached in and grabbed my hand to pull me out," Jim went on, "trust me, that was above and beyond."

"I can image," said Simon drily.

"He also talked me through a bad zone out over a phobia I've got about open water," said Jim. "It's the only reason I was able to make the swim from the rig to the trawler and take control of the boat and the chemical weapons the crew had stashed." If Simon had been any other kind of policeman, he'd be demanding that Ellison see a shrink and get his phobia under control. But being the kind of man he was, he understood what Jim was trying to say. Phobia conquered, thanks to a fast-talking long haired hippie anthropologist.

"And then there's the fact that Blair defused the bomb." Jim said.

Simon choked on the coffee he'd just swallowed. "He WHAT?!"

Jim nodded. "I'm not kidding," he said. "I wanted you to understand what happened." Simon took a deep breath, "found his center," as the kid would say, and reached for the antacids in his desk drawer. "Okay," he said, "What happened?"

Jim finally took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee. "When I swam over to the boat," he started, "I left Blair with instructions to get to the radio room and try to call for help. It wasn't until I'd boarded the trawler and overheard two of the crew talking that I found out they'd left a bomb on the rig to blow at midnight and destroy the structure, along with any evidence of chemical weapons. I neutralized a couple of the crew and made may way to the ship's steering cabin, and tried to reach Blair on the radio. When I got him, I told him there was a bomb set to go off in minutes and he had to get off that rig." Ellison set his cup down and leaned forward again, his arms resting on his knees. "Do you know what he said to me? He said 'Jim man, what about the rest of the crew? They're trapped below decks!'" Jim's voice took on a frantic tone, a remarkably accurate impression of an excited and upset Sandburg. "I told him there wasn't any time," he went on, "and he asked me if I knew where the bomb was." Jim looked up at Banks, who was positive the words "holy shit" were written across his face. "One of the crew had mentioned something about oil drums so I told him that," Jim shrugged. "Basically I just begged him to get the hell out of there because the whole thing was going to blow in less than three minutes. But I was talking to the air by that point, because Sandburg had dropped the radio and taken off for the lower decks."

Ellison paused, a faraway look in his eyes as he recreated the scene in his mind. "Blair made it from A deck to D deck in less than a minute and a half. He must have been sliding down the damn banisters. He takes off directly for the room we were briefly held in-because he remembered that it contained oil drums- and spends what should have been the last minutes of his life looking for an explosive device instead of running away from it. He found the bomb, and defused it, with seconds to spare."

Simon was almost afraid to ask. "How did he defuse it?"

Jim's look was a bizarre combination of grimness and awe. "He kept pulling wires out until the timer stopped."

"He kept pulling wires…" Simon's hands were shaking slightly. "Yes, sir," said Jim.

Silence fell again, as Simon tried to come to grips with what Sandburg had done, while Jim Ellison watched his captain, waiting patiently for him to either explode or break into semi-hysterical laughter. Jim had indulged himself in both the previous night while they had waited for a chopper ride back to the mainland. But Blair had just shrugged the whole thing off. "Come on man, it's not that big a deal. It's not like they were trying to make it hard. The thing practically had an off switch."

Jim watched as Simon deliberately and carefully set his coffee cup down, and then reached to grip the edge of his desk with tight fingers. Taking that as a sign that his captain was in control of himself, Jim went on. "The full complement of the B shift and the D shift were still on board the rig," he said, "Blair saved the lives of about 35 men."

Simon shook his head. It was an incredible story. "And none of this is in your reports?" he asked. "No sir," Jim said, "but it should be in somebody's report. Somewhere."

Simon had to agree. It was the kind of action people got medals for.

Now that he'd got some of his story out, Jim's restlessness was back, and he was up and out of the chair, and prowling around the room again. It put Simon in mind of the big black jaguar he and Daryl had seen at the zoo once. "This Sentinel thing," Jim said suddenly, turning to look at his captain, "it's not going away. It's just getting deeper."

Simon frowned slightly. "What do you mean?"

Jim shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don't know how to explain it, except that the more I learn, the more there is to learn, and the stronger the connection becomes between me and Sandburg." He grimaced a little. "I don't want to come off all mystical here," he went on, "but something about this pushes at us."

Simon thought about that. "You mean you aren't in control?" he asked, "You're doing things against your better judgment?" But Jim was shaking his head. "No, no, it's more like…having _more_ control. Seizing your destiny or something." He made a frustrated movement, reaching for the words that would make his captain understand. "The first time I met him, Sandburg saved me from getting hit by a truck. I told you about that." Simon nodded. He remembered wondering at the time if Jim had developed epilepsy or seizures. But Jim was still talking, "You and I know that in a crisis situation there are people who act, and people who freeze. Well, Blair's probably always been the kind of guy who acts. The one who jumps in front of a truck to pull someone out of the way. He' probably always had that in him. But now it's amped up to the tenth power, just like my eyesight. Now he's running _towards_ bombs." Jim turned to gaze out the window at the rainy streets. "We're both just operating on instinct, I guess," he said.

Simon blew out a breath. He'd sensed the friendship and trust between Jim and his unlikely companion, and while he didn't fully understand it, he knew it was a good thing-for Jim, for the kid, and not coincidentally, for his police department. "What you're saying," he said, faltering his way towards a better understanding of his two most problematic and puzzling friends, "is that you and Sandburg have tapped into the potential of your partnership in a way most people can't. Just like they say we only use 10% of our brains, when there's so much more. You and Sandburg have a connection that's using 50, 60% while the rest of us are still in the 10% range.

Jim smiled wryly. "I'd say it's like being married, but being married was never anything like this. This is…_important_." And didn't that speak volumes, Simon thought, a low mental whistle going through his head.

Jim spoke again. "We both know that sooner or later Sandburg's position as my partner will have to be justified. We passed "ride along" status months ago." It was a problem that Simon was well aware of. If Sandburg was injured tagging along after Jim, the department would be looking at one hell of a lawsuit. Jim was still speaking, "I don't think it would hurt to document just how valuable Blair has been to this department," he said.

Jim turned and set the file he'd been gripping down on Simon's desk. Simon took it, but didn't open it. The file wasn't thick, but it wasn't empty either. "I'm guessing this is your version of whatever hasn't been in any of those reports," he said. Jim nodded. Simon drummed his fingers softly on the manila folder, thinking. Documentation cut both ways. It could save you, and it could damn you. Simon both did, and didn't, want to read the contents of the folder in front of him.

"Somebody needs to know, Simon," Jim insisted, "Somebody needs to recognize how brave Sandburg is, what an asset he is to the police department."

You didn't get to be head of the Major Crimes Unit by sweeping stuff under the rug, either. One of the things that made Simon Banks a good captain was his ability to be buffer between his men and City Hall, allowing them to get their jobs done with a minimum distraction from the whatever political power struggle was currently rocking the halls of government. For every time he'd forced Ellison to back down or share an investigation in the name of political expediency, there were a dozen times where he'd run interference and successfully kept the machinations of the city council out of Jim's short and Blair's way too long hair.

"Okay, Jim," he finally said. "I agree with you. I don't know what Sandburg's future with the police is going to look like, but if you think it has a chance of becoming a permanent situation, then we need to take steps now." He picked up his phone and called his secretary. "Rhonda? Can you pull some files for me? I need the procedures and criteria for vetting expert witnesses and departmental advisors. Thank you."

Simon looked back up at Jim, who was leaning against the window frame, seemingly enjoying watching his captain step into the role. "Here's what we're going to do, Jim," he said. "We going to start by conducting an internal assessment of the ride along program, that will require both you and Sandburg to submit independent reports of your field work. I'll set Sandburg to evaluate things like communication, cooperation, and the value of the experience for his work. At the same time, I'll require Sandburg to audit some basic classes in police work and procedure." Like proper procedure when faced with a bomb you aren't trained to handle, Simon thought grimly. Pulled wires until the timer stopped. Jesus.

"You'll continue to submit reports on his role in the program," he continued, eyeing the folder in front of him, "including whatever information you think is necessary, but also making sure to emphasize how the program has either benefitted, or hindered, your ability to do your job effectively." Jim had started to grin. "We'll put notes in your case files where references to the assessment are appropriate, but leave the ride along assessment itself as a separate study."

"That's your solution, Simon?" Jim was grinning broadly, "More paperwork?"

"Paperwork makes the world go round, Ellison," Simon said. "This way, we'll have extensive documentation of Sandburg's accomplishments as your partner without impeding on his own imposed restrictions to maintain his academic objectivity. And if he does ever decide to make the position permanent, he'll already have met most of the qualifications."

Jim was nodding, but Simon could tell that his attention was suddenly divided. He was tilting his head and his grin had softened to a fond smile. Beyond the closed office door Simon could hear the amped up hubbub that usually meant Blair Sandburg had bounded into Major Crimes and was doing the rounds. Simon shook his head, feeling exasperated. It was a feeling he was used to when it came to Ellison and Sandburg, but thinking about 35 rig workers who were still around to work their shift, Simon knew a little exasperation was a small price to pay. "Call your partner in here, Jim, so I can tell him he's going to owe me twice as many reports from now on."

"Yes, sir," said Jim Ellison. "Happy to."


End file.
